Industrial vehicles are commonly used to transport materials and equipment in a facility. Industrial vehicles are particularly useful for transporting loads that are too heavy to be transported by human-powered means. Because a fleet of industrial vehicle can represent a significant investment for a business, tracking the use of these industrial vehicles is important to maximizing their utility and their life-expectancy.
Warehouse operators, fleet supervisors, and other interested parties commonly track the following metrics in regard to their industrial vehicles: hours of operation, hours of operation while carrying a load, hours in motion, hours in motion while carrying a load, and hours of operation with a driver inside the vehicle. Tracking these metrics can provide an understanding of how each industrial vehicle is being utilized. This can be important in anticipating maintenance needs as well as the need to purchase additional industrial vehicles. This information may also be useful in providing training to employees to better maximize their use of an industrial vehicle.
One conventional approach to gathering these types of metrics would be to install sensors on the industrial vehicle. For example, a scale sensor could be installed to determine whether there is cargo present in the load-carrying portion of the industrial vehicle. Another sensor could be installed to detect when a driver is present in the driver compartment. Installation of these types of sensors would require a costly retrofit to an existing fleet.
What is needed is a system for monitoring an industrial vehicle that can be easily installed into an existing industrial vehicle, or that can be easily integrated into the manufacturing of a new industrial vehicle.